Spring Brides

by Judith Stacy

  “You need a lighter saddle,” Ingram observed mildly after a time. She gave him a look.

  “Or that one will do,” he amended, scratching the side of his nose with his forefinger.

  Finally—finally—she was able to get the saddle on, and, with a myriad of instructions from the onlookers, she managed to get it buckled tightly enough so that it stayed put. More or less.

  She looked around at the others for some indication of their delight and approval—and met a sea of pained and somewhat incredulous expressions.

  “I think you better learn to ride bareback, miss,” Annie said.

  By the end of the day, she had gotten better at saddling and more guilty about not having regular lessons. Ultimately, Ingram was satisfied with her new ability. He left without a word before the children did, and neither he nor Petey returned the next morning.

  She was now in Annie’s hands. The girl’s unorthodox approach to riding instruction included her insistence that Eleanor know how to fall on the ground—not an easy task, because Eleanor felt obliged to monitor a singsong chorus of multiplication tables from the assembled spectators at the same time. Both she and the children practiced until Annie was satisfied that Eleanor would make every attempt to roll instead of plunk when she was thrown. As school days went, a good time was had by all—even Theodore.

  By the next day, Eleanor was considered ready for an actual ride—bareback. She put on her makeshift riding apparel and set forth. The children had enough sense not to remark upon the outfit, and, incredibly, riding the docile “Nell” when Eleanor was a little girl had left a certain residual skill when it came to sitting a horse. She didn’t fall off, and she found the whole experience not unpleasant.

  Her confidence grew, and by the end of the next week she had graduated to riding with a saddle. There had been no sign of Dan Ingram since the day he’d satisfied himself that she could get a saddle cinched. Petey made it to school two days, and she could have asked him about Ingram’s whereabouts, but she didn’t.

  After Petey had gone the way of Dan Ingram, she continued the lessons with the other children and tried not to think about…anything.

  One afternoon, when she had opened the schoolroom door and was about to dismiss her pupils for the weekend, she found a small package wrapped up in brown paper and tied with string. She knew immediately what it had to be—and was. Three sticks of peppermint candy.

  “Where did this come from?” she asked them.

  They looked at each other.

  “Well?” she insisted. “Jimmy?”

  “It weren’t any of us, miss,” Jimmy said with a certain alarm, apparently at being thought guilty of something that for once he didn’t actually do. “It weren’t there when I closed the door after recess.”

  “‘Wasn’t any of us.’ ‘Wasn’t there,’” she corrected absently. “Does anybody know anything about it, then?”

  “No, miss,” they said in unison, and she sighed.

  “Your pocket knife, please,” she said to Jimmy. He brought it forward, wiping it on his pant leg along the way. She cut the candy into smaller pieces and distributed them among the group.

  “Run along home now, and I’ll see you Monday morning,” she said, sending them off smiling. And she sat for a long time at her desk—eating the last small piece of candy.

  As the weather grew warmer, there were days when none of the children came to school. Every pair of hands was needed to make ready for the long winter, which, she was assured, would come much more quickly than she could imagine. Even so, she saw riders from time to time, passing on their way to some other part of the ranch, or sometimes actually riding into the schoolyard, if she happened not to be visible outside or at a window where they could see her when they passed. She was grateful for the monitoring, she supposed—if, indeed, that was what it was. And she was more than a little annoyed with herself for always looking for a white shirt among them or for the white-footed sorrel Dan Ingram always rode. There had been no more incidents, and she could only suppose that he had been the target and not she—which lent more credence to the theory that Karl Dorsey had been behind it than she would have liked.

  She missed the children when they didn’t come to school, for when they did, she was so occupied with them she didn’t have the opportunity to think of Dan Ingram. It was all too familiar to her, this dread she had that something was going to happen to him, and no amount of mental reasoning on her part could take it away. Her concern, her worry, simply was, whether it should be or not.

  Every now and then she saw him—when she went to the house because Lavinia Selby invited her to dinner so she could satisfy herself that Eleanor had indeed mastered at least some aspects of horsemanship. Once, she encountered him on what passed for the streets of Soul Harbor. And always, always, it caught her off guard, before she could steel herself against the relief and the elation the chance meeting gave her. He never presumed to speak to her. He merely touched the brim of his hat and moved on.

  In the middle of August, the children could be spared long enough for half days in the afternoon. She worked hard to give them the lessons she thought they needed in the limited time she had. The hurry of it all left her feeling restless and ineffective. One afternoon, she abandoned the tidying she always did at the end of the day and went to sit in the sunshine on the porch steps. Dan Ingram was there ahead of her. She was startled, but she made no attempt to run him off with the broom she still had in her hands. Instead, she put it aside and sat down beside him.

  “Is warming my porch part of your job, too?” she asked.

  He glanced at her. “No.”

  He looked so tired—physically exhausted and deprived of sleep. He didn’t say anything else, and the silence between them lengthened.

  “Nobody’s shot at me lately,” she said to end it.

  He nodded. Then he drew a quiet breath. Then he looked at her.

  “Come walk with me, Eleanor.”

  It was in her to refuse, but she didn’t. She didn’t even ask where he wanted to go. She stood, and he with her. They walked in the direction he chose—down toward the stream and the cottonwoods. There was a slight chill in the air. Already she could feel the summer going.

  “It’s all tangled up in my mind,” he said.

  “What is?”

  He smiled slightly. “You and the cottonwoods. I don’t ever see one without remembering how glad they made you. You thought you’d never see a real tree again.”

  She smiled in return. “So I did—but I didn’t think you knew it.”

  “It shows on your face when something makes you happy.”

  She looked at him, then away, concentrating on the sound of the water and the leaves rustling in the trees.

  “Sometimes it’s me,” he said quietly. He moved to where he could see her face.

  “Sometimes it’s me,” he said again.

  She didn’t object to the truth of his observation. She didn’t say anything.

  “Petey’s dead,” he said in the same quiet way.

  She gave a sharp exhalation of breath. “Oh—oh—Petey.”

  “We found him in the high meadow yesterday.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He was too good a rider, too good with cows to have ended up the way he did. I think he was deliberately dragged and trampled.”

  “Who would do that?”

  Dan didn’t answer the question. “I’m…going to be gone for a while. I just wanted you to know. It’s one thing for me not to come here because that’s the way you say it has to be. I wanted you to know I’m not coming now because I can’t.” He picked up a small pebble and tossed it into the stream. “I think about you. It’s—”

  “Don’t,” she said.

  “Don’t think about you? Or don’t tell you I do?”

  “Both.”

  “If the thinking could be stopped, I would have done it. Eleanor—”

  He reached out for her, and she meant to move away from him.
She meant to—but she didn’t. She stepped into his arms instead, her face pressed hard into his shoulder. He held her tightly, his head bent so that his stubbled cheek rested against hers. In her agitation, she struck his arm with her fist, once, then clung to the back of his shirt with both hands. It had been so long since she’d felt these things, things she’d never wanted to feel again. Love and fear and desperation. She was caught, and she couldn’t escape.

  She lifted her face to his.

  It’s the sadness. Because of Petey. That’s all.

  He kissed her eyes with such tenderness that she wanted to weep. She could feel the tremor of desire in his body, and when his mouth found hers, she gave a soft moan. The kiss was deep and needy, and with the last ounce of will she had, she pushed herself free of his embrace.

  “No,” she said. “I can’t—”

  “You need to know—” he began.

  “I already know all I need to.”

  “Eleanor, wait…”

  She backed away from him and all but ran in the direction they had come. Yes, she knew. She knew.

  Dan Ingram was going to break her heart.

  Chapter Five

  “Did you see her?”

  “I saw her,” Dan said.

  “What did she say?”

  He glanced at Mick as they rode along, but he didn’t answer.

  “So what do you think?” Mick persisted.

  “I think we wouldn’t be looking for whoever killed Petey if they hadn’t taken twenty-five cows with them,” he said, choosing to pretend that Mick had moved on from Eleanor Hansen to the job at hand.

  “Did you tell her where we was going? What we was going to be doing?”

  “Mick—”

  “Well, I got to ask, don’t I? If I wait for you to come out and tell me, I’ll be too damn old and deaf to hear it.”

  They rode for a time in silence, mostly because Dan urged his mount on until he was riding a little ahead.

  “I reckon some of the boys will watch out for her while we’re gone,” Mick said, catching up.

  “If the Selbys don’t go trying to spite each other.”

  “Yeah, there’s that all right. I reckon we’d best find the sons of bitches that killed Petey pretty quick then. You reckon it’s Karl and his bunch or not?”

  “It’s Karl.”

  “I never figured him to take up rustling. He’ll cheat you at cards if he gets the chance and there’s that thing with Lillyann—but stealing the colonel’s cows? By damn, that’s like asking to be a dead man.”

  “He’d do it if Livingston Warner set him to it.”

  “You know, she sure is pretty, Dan—your Miss Eleanor.”

  “She’s not mine.”

  “Sure she is—she just don’t know it yet. Did you get a little kiss from her or anything—?”

  “Oh, shut up! I’m not listening to you all the way to Montana.”

  He spurred his horse hard.

  “Canada’s more like it—and I don’t know how you’re going to help it!” Mick called after him.

  “I could shoot you and blame it on the rustlers,” Dan yelled back.

  Mick laughed, and for once, he stayed behind, leaving Dan to his own thoughts.

  Eleanor.

  He was worried about her, damn it, and had been from the first day he’d met her. The school was too far from the house, thanks to the colonel’s spite against his sister-in-law. Dan had been certain Lavinia Selby would relocate it, but thus far she hadn’t. He knew Eleanor was strong, stronger than the colonel had bargained for and stronger than Lavinia had dared hope. He had to believe she’d be all right.

  He could still feel her, still taste her. And he could still see the look in her eyes. It would never work out for them. He knew that. He might have gotten past the fact that she deserved a better man than he was. He could have worked hard to give her a good life, to be worthy of her.

  But he couldn’t get the blood off his hands. Even if the colonel hadn’t ordered it, something had to be done about Karl Dorsey. And Dan Ingram was the one with the skill to do it. He’d killed men for four long years, and he still remembered how. He had Mick with him. Mick would watch his back, and he was the best marksman Ingram had ever seen. Surely, between the two of them and the men who had gone on the hunt ahead of them, they could get this done.

  Once and for all. Until the next time.

  “She’ll be all right,” Mick called.

  “Somebody shot into the schoolhouse, Mick!”

  “I don’t think you got to worry about that!”

  He didn’t justify the remark with a response.

  “You going to mope the whole damn way?” Mick called.

  “Yeah,” Ingram said, and urged his horse into a gallop.

  “I like having Petey here,” Annie said, looking out at the new grave just visible from the schoolhouse window. “He liked coming to school. He liked us calling him ‘Mister.’”

  “Did he?” Eleanor said. She had been surprised at first by the plan to bury Petey nearby, but she liked having him close, too. As long as there were children in the school, his grave would be tended.

  “Are you worried, miss?”

  “No, Annie,” Eleanor said. It was a lie, so much so that she couldn’t look Annie in the eye. She handed Theodore over and drew the slates the girl had collected for her closer.

  “The Selby men have been gone a long time, miss. I’m worried whoever killed Petey might kill Dan, too. Will they, do you think?”

  “I don’t know, Annie. I hope not.”

  “Dan and the rest of them, they won’t give up. They’ll chase whoever did it all the way to Canada if they have to. I know they will. I heard one of the men at the exchange say they’ll just chase them until they get somebody’s cows, but I know better.”

  “Cows?”

  “Those men took the ones Petey was watching. People say they killed him for the cows, miss. And it weren’t—wasn’t—the Indians, either. They liked Petey. Everybody liked Petey.”

  Theodore began to fret, and Annie went to find the cloth with the lump of sugar tied in the corner to give him to suck on. She popped the sugar teat into Theodore’s mouth and looked out the window again. “Rain says the snow is coming early this year. You reckon Petey will know it, miss?”

  “He might know—but it won’t bother him,” Eleanor said, trying to get to the crux of the question. “He’ll see the beauty of it and that’s all.”

  “Like he sees us when we come to visit him.”

  “Exactly like that.”

  Eleanor went back to the slates, calling the children in when she’d finished, essentially so she could send them home. The days were growing shorter, and she didn’t want them out in the dark.

  She had her school routine well established now, the lessons passing exactly according to plan. She went riding nearly every afternoon after the children had departed, looking, always looking, for some sign that the men from Selby’s had returned.

  She never saw anyone on her lonely jaunts over the grassland. She made certain to keep the cottonwoods in sight on these excursions, and she always returned feeling better somehow. Perhaps there was something to be said for being under God’s ever-watchful eye, after all.

  In the evenings after her supper, she read or sewed or crocheted or made small prizes to award the children for their scholastic accomplishments. Nothing elaborate—sheets of writing paper she’d decorated with watercolor flowers or ribbons or laurel leaves, and a carefully copied inspirational verse. At the end of the school year she would present each one of them with a little something—even Theodore. His was empty wooden spools tied together in a circle for him to bite on when his budding teeth made him restless.

  But no matter what she was doing, she thought about Dan Ingram. It was like living Rob’s farewell all over again. She couldn’t muster any hope that Dan would be all right. Experience had left her with no room for any emotion except fear.

  She was afraid for him, ever
y waking moment. Lavinia Selby had said it: life was precarious here. Lavinia was a widow too young, and Petey slept in his quiet grave in the schoolyard. Eleanor didn’t want to think about Lillyann and her baby.

  The last day of September the snow Annie’s Indian scout had predicted arrived. Eleanor woke to find the ground covered, and it was still falling. She got several buckets of water in and enough wood to keep the fire lit during the coming night.

  She kept moving restlessly from window to window. There was nothing to see but the blowing white flakes. It was so different from the snows at home. There, it coated everything and stayed put. Here, it swirled endlessly in the wind. Part of the ground covered one moment might be all but uncovered the next.

  She baked bread to have something to do. Boiled coffee. Paced. She didn’t want to be at the Selby house for the duration, but she missed the prospect of human contact. She had no expectation of seeing anyone for days.

  Once, she thought she heard a noise coming from the schoolroom, but when she went to look, there was nothing but the endless sound of the wind.

  She gave a heavy sigh and returned to watching out the kitchen window, and after a time she pulled on her heavy shawl and made her way out to the enclosure to make sure the mare was all right. She pitched some hay into the crib and satisfied herself that there was enough water in the trough. The mare gave a soft, rumbled greeting at her appearance, but then its attention was taken by something in the distance, toward the cottonwoods. Eleanor looked in that direction, but could see nothing except swirling snow.

  But then she saw movement—a riderless horse approaching. It was saddled, and it trotted up to the enclosure and stopped, its reins trailing on the ground.

  The horse was a white-footed sorrel. The white-footed sorrel.

  Eleanor walked toward it carefully, catching the reins before it shied away. She patted its neck, searched the saddle for some clue as to what it was doing here.

  She gave a sharp intake of breath. There was a dark stain on the horse’s shoulder and down the saddle—blood. She stood for a moment, trying to decide what to do, knowing immediately that if the horse was here, then Dan must be somewhere around, too.